Many life events and activities, such as high school or college graduation, marriage, childbirth, sending children to college, relocation and the like create a need for products and services. Such events present significant opportunities for marketing efforts directed toward consumers engaging in a particular activity. Relocation of a family, to take a particular example, frequently creates needs for a particular set of products or services. The act of relocating generates requirements for goods and services related to making the move, such as moving and storage services, packing material, truck rental and the like, as well as requirements for goods and services related to taking up the new residence such as insurance, utility services, school registration, furniture, groceries and the like. A relocating family has a set of needs which can be easily anticipated. Because the activities involved in relocation frequently occur in a known sequence and because the time occupied by each activity can be estimated with reasonable reliability, the approximate times at which the family will need particular goods or services can be anticipated. Identifying a relocating person or family therefore provides a significant marketing opportunity to a number of vendors, and the value of the marketing opportunity increases with the certainty with which the prospective consumer is identified as a genuine relocating consumer.
Because a relocating family often spends a considerable sum in arranging a move and purchasing products or services needed after the move, a vendor will frequently be willing to extend special offers to such a family. These offers can be significantly more valuable than those which would be offered to other prospective consumers. However, a particularly lucrative offer advertised generally in an effort to reach relocating consumers might induce prospective consumers to falsely claim that they were relocating, and it is difficult for a vendor to determine whether a consumer who claims to be preparing to engage in a particular activity such as relocating is telling the truth. The vendor cannot inquire too closely into the consumer's personal affairs for fear of alienating the consumer. The vendor cannot reasonably ask for a deposit or credit card guarantee because a consumer is unlikely to part with money or a credit card number unless he or she is actually buying a product or service. In the present state of the art, therefore, a vendor cannot easily prevent offers directed toward a specific category of consumers from being used by persons not in the category.
Moreover, it is often difficult for a vendor to discover that a particular consumer is relocating, particularly early in the relocation process. Many of the actions which identify a consumer as relocating occur shortly before, or after, the consumer has moved to a new residence. For example, a consumer typically enters a change of address order so that the consumer's mail will be properly delivered to the new residence. If a vendor finds out that a consumer has entered a change of address order, the vendor can identify the consumer as being about to change, or having recently changed, addresses. Such an identification allows the vendor to include the consumer in marketing efforts directed toward similar consumers. In most cases, however, the move is imminent or has already occurred by the time a consumer needs to enter a change of address order, and the typical consumer has already arranged for or used many products and services related to a move. For example packing supplies and moving services or truck rental would have already been arranged for or used by the time a consumer has typically entered a change of address order. Companies offering products or services which are typically arranged early in the relocation process do not gain much benefit by identifying relocating consumers as a result of events which occur later in the relocation process.
There exists, therefore, a need for a system which will identify a consumer as engaging in a specific activity identified with a marketing opportunity, using information which the consumer will be willing to provide, and which identifies the consumer early in the process of his or her engaging in the activity.